As most of you know, yesterday there was a leak that revealed the upcoming DLC “ME3:From Ashes” on the Xbox LIVE Marketplace. This leak took place before we were prepared to make an announcement about the details of that pack (slated for this Friday). There has been a lot of discussion about the DLC offering but we wanted to clarify a few things...

- “From Ashes” includes the Prothean squad mate, an adventure on Eden Prime, a new weapon, and an alternate appearance for every squad mate. Note that these alternate appearances are in addition to the ones already advertised in the CE.

- The Collectors Edition has been advertised from the beginning as containing a bonus character/mission, but we were not at liberty to provide the details. The Prothean is optional content that is certainly designed to appeal to long-time fans, which is why he is part of the CE offering (the version many fans would be likely to purchase). Mass Effect 3 is a complete – and a huge game - right out of the box.

- The content in “From Ashes” was developed by a separate team (after the core game was finished) and not completed until well after the main game went into certification.

- The Collectors Edition has been sold out in most places for some time now, and is becoming very hard to find (many players prefer not to purchase the digital version). As such, we wanted to make this content available so that SE buyers could also incorporate the Prothean into their game.

We’ll be releasing some images and video about this pack in the coming days.

As always, we are extremely thankful for all of your support. We pulled out all of the stops to make Mass Effect 3 the best game ever, and we can't wait for you all to experience it.

Dev wrote on Feb 24, 2012, 14:10:"not completed until well after the main game went into certification."

Har har. Even if that was the case, its not the case for all the DLC in this game, and many games are the same. Why would they even bother to mention it? Everyone knows DLC nowadays is often done before the game's release. I'm not exactly keen to take EA's word on that kinda thing.

Game complete is never the same as game released...especially when TCR is involved. There's always some period of time between "done" and "shipped" when new content cannot be added to the game without seriously jeapordizing the release date. And as everything from reproduction, packaging, distribution, and marketting hinges around that critical date...it's stupidly dangerous to add new content to a game during those final phases of completion.

DLC, on the other hand, because it's inherent to an online activation/distribution directly to the user, has a much shorter window between completion and release.

Yea, a lot of people know DLC is done before a game is released, but very few seem to be able to grasp the idea that this is content that would have never been part of the game outside of DLC.